Vancouver Sun ePaper

Russia's ever-expanding list of banned Canadians is starting to get weird

Appear targeted based on tweets, media mentions

TRISTIN HOPPER

As Russian forces continue to be routed in eastern Ukraine, Moscow's ministry of foreign affairs is continuing its increasingly obscure quest to find new Canadians to ban from the country.

Last month, Moscow added 87 new names to its “stop list” of Canadians who are barred entry to the Russian Federation.

Among them are a number of regional politicians who have no role whatsoever in Canadian military and foreign policy, and some who haven't even mentioned the conflict in public.

The latest list includes the premiers and commissioners of all three Canadian territories, as well the CEOs of companies ranging from Thornhill Medical to 3M Canada. According to Russia, the companies are all guilty of supplying the “Kyiv neo-Nazi regime.”

Russia first began sanctioning individual Canadians in April in response to similar sanctions imposed by Canada on top figures within the inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Initially, the Russian Federation tried to focus on Canadians who had a direct hand in crafting Canada's policy of providing military and financial aid to Ukraine, or in influencing public opinion against Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of the country.

A first round of sanctions on March 15 included Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his cabinet and the leaders of all of Canada's major political parties. A month later this was updated to include all of Trudeau's senior advisers, as well as a handful of particularly outspoken subnational leaders such as Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and Toronto Mayor John Tory.

But as Russia continued to ban new Canadians every couple of weeks, their relationship to Canadian foreign policy has been getting increasingly obscure.

There are now 905 Canadians subject to “indefinite” bans from Russia, according to a running list on the official website of the Russian ministry of foreign affairs.

This includes all MPs in the House of Commons, all members of the Senate, every single provincial premier, a substantial chunk of Canada's top military brass, and virtually anybody tied to a Canadian organization with the word “Ukraine” in the title.

This includes the management of the Council of Ukrainian Credit Unions of Canada, the League of Ukrainian Canadians, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, and the Canadian conductor of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra.

A who's who of Canada's corporate elite have also made the list, apparently based on whether their companies have ever manufactured something that could even be of peripheral use to a Western military.

The Russian ministry of foreign affairs has also apparently begun to seek out any Canadian with a track record of dissing the USSR or communism in general.

Toronto property developer Howard Sokolovsky made the list because he was a prominent backer of Canada's official Memorial to the Victims of Communism.

The bans also encompass a substantial chunk of National Post writers, including columnists Raymond J. de Souza, Adam Zivo and Tasha Kheiriddin, and Ottawa bureau chief John Ivison.

Some of the more fringe entries on the list appear to have made the cut simply because they badmouthed Russia on Twitter, or were the subject of some long-standing Russian grudge that predates the Ukraine conflict entirely.

Richard Wilson, director of the Calgary Remand Centre, appears to have made the list because a Russian student was badly beaten at the centre in 2012 while awaiting bail.

Peter O'Neill, a speech writer with Natural Resources Canada, may have made the list because of an August tweet in which he caught two Russians jumping out of a car with diplomatic plates in order to vandalize a pair of bikes owned by Ukrainian activists.

Russia also saw fit to shut out a handful of prominent Canadian cannabis activists, including Marc Emery, the one-time founder of the B.C. Marijuana Party and now a candidate for the People's Party of Canada. “Apparently, I am an official `Russophobe'?!” wrote Emery in an official Twitter reaction. “Take that all you `I Stand With Ukraine' flag avatar twitter accounts!”

Russia's latest 87 names included Kerry McElroy, an occasional contributor to the news website Kyiv Post. Also included were people whose only apparent crime against Russia were that they were quoted in one of his columns.

McElroy said in a recent column for the Kyiv Post that the list has “puzzled many,” and that “the vast majority of those on Moscow's latest Canada blacklist have never been to Russia and have no connections there.”

CANADA

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2022-10-04T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-10-04T07:00:00.0000000Z

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